Decentralization of power in Ukraine to provide $3 billion to local budgets in 2015

Vyacheslav Negoda said the bills in particular propose forming and approving local budgets independently of the state budget

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KIEV, September 30. /ITAR-TASS/. Draft laws on decentralization of power in Ukraine suppose that local budgets will grow by 39 billion hryvnias ($3 billion), Ukraine’s first deputy minister of regional development, construction and utilities, Vyacheslav Negoda, said Tuesday.

As part of efforts to “reform local self-government and organize territorial power bodies in Ukraine, the Regional Development Ministry has drafted bills on budget decentralization,” Negoda said as quoted by his ministry’s press service.

He said the bills in particular propose forming and approving local budgets independently of the state budget.

On September 25, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, while presenting his program of the country’s long-term development (Strategy-2020), said the authorities’ priority tasks include decentralization and reform of state administration.

The UN says clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics, have claimed some 3,500 lives and forced hundreds of thousands to flee Ukraine’s war-torn southeast.

The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on cessation of fire and exchange of prisoners during talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk. The ceasefire took effect the same day.

Ukraine’s parliament on September 16 granted a special self-rule status to certain districts in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions for three years. Elections to local self-government bodies were set for December 7. The Verkhovna Rada also passed a law on amnesty for participants of combat activities in Ukraine’s troubled eastern regions.